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Nicolas Steenhout to Present at OSDC 2008

September 19th, 2008

My presentation proposal to the Open Source Developers Conference 2008 was accepted. The presentation, titled "Web Accessibility and Content Management Systems", will be one of the "Extended Talks" available at the Conference. There is a lot of room for improvement in the level of accessibility of CMS, and I am both excited and honoured at the chance to discuss these issues with fellow open source developers.

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Google Chrome Browser Released with No Thoughts of Accessibility

September 7th, 2008

So recently Google released a brand new browser called 'Chrome'. It offers a simplified interface and a few "new" features, which are discussed at length already by many other people. I won't go there. But it's worth mentionning that the browser is next to unusable for many people with disabilities. Screenreader software is not supported, and keyboard access is quite limited, among other issues.

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To each their own job(s)

June 1st, 2008

A few days ago I attended a training session about new features in a large records administration application used at a major university. One of the developers was providing the training. The application appears to be powerful and working well, and the trainer knew his topic. But… The application is not particularly user friendly. And the trainer was obviously more comfortable writing code and having geeky discussions than training non-geeks. It really brought the point home that every one of us has areas of expertise and we can all benefit from working together on a product rather than have a few people do everything themselves

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Alt Attributes Can Be Tricky

May 25th, 2008

I was looking at a site last night. Ok, I looked at a lot of sites yesterday, but had a specific look at one. They had done the "right" thing and declared an alt attribute to some images. But giving the site a whirl with images turned off, anyone could quickly see that their choice of alt text was not particularly helpful.

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What About User Responsibility?

May 17th, 2008

I am an advocate for people with disabilities' right to a barrier-free environment. We have a right to be able to access content on websites. But with rights come responsibilities. We have a responsibility to know how to use the tools at our disposal. Web developers and site designers must ensure that web pages are written in such a way that the content can be accessed. But it is not their responsibility to hold the hand of their site's visitors.

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